


Rock to the Head

by guyi (yujael)



Series: Audeamus [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, accompanies Audeamus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujael/pseuds/guyi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series short, set pre/during Audeamus</p><p>Three years ago, if somebody had told him that his adventure to slay a dragon would begin with being hit in the head with a rock, Gavin would have hit them upside their head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock to the Head

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted a long time ago on my tumblr, and it's only occurred to me now that this, along with the other Audeamus shorts, should also be here.

 Three years ago, if somebody had told him that his adventure to slay a dragon would begin with being hit in the head with a rock, Gavin would have hit them upside  _their_  head. Not only did he not know how to use a weapon other than a wooden stick, but even the idea of fighting a dragon was one of the most insane things Gavin could think of. They have gigantic teeth and fire hot enough to melt anything, but besides that they tended to be very peaceful. Why in all hell’s name would he want to kill one?

He didn’t know it at the time, but three years later he would come to the conclusion that the rock to the head must have knocked something out of place.

–

As a child, Gavin had a fascination with making and wrecking things (and he still has this fascination). He’d make small structures out of wood and wicker, and then steal some of his uncle’s bangers and watch with glee as his hard work was blown to smithereens.

When he grew older, he began wandering around the village in search of different materials, ways to make even better spectacles. And then, after the colour in his wings filled out completely, he began wandering  _outside_  Ad Lucem’s walls, because during his first flight to the Southern Range, he found a pretty piece of metal half buried in the ground.

He didn’t want to blow that up, so he went looking for more, wandering out farther and farther, and the pieces he found collected steadily in the form of wind chimes hanging from his house. But most of them had a price – beasts prowled the forest’s old paths, and he’d had more than one close call with them. It wasn’t until he almost got his wing shredded by a wolf beast that Dan stepped in.

–

Dan was his best friend since their parents forced them to stay in the river until all the mud was out of their white feathers. They hadn’t really known each other before then, but earlier that day Dan had discovered Gavin when he was about to blow something up, and after they both got covered in mud, they discovered their shared affinity for explosions.

While Gavin was planning to just go where ever the wind took him in life, Dan became a Guardian of Ad Lucem. He learned how to use a sword and he helped keep the village safe from beasts. After Gavin returned home with blood on his feathers one too many times, Dan apparently had enough of him getting injured by beasts when he wasn’t even a Guardian. He pulled Gavin aside when they were alone, gave him something wrapped in cloth and said, “I nicked that from the armory – don’t tell anyone, because you’re not supposed to have it – and I’m going to teach you how to use it before you get your head lopped off.”

Gavin unfolded the cloth and almost dropped the weapon he found underneath. “You’re just giving me this?” He asked, staring at the dagger – less than a foot long, smooth, and completely made from green-metal, the sharpest material to build a weapon with. It was easily one of the most valuable (and dangerous) things he’d ever held.

“Don’t go running around with it,” Dan told him. “Or else you’ll cut your own hand off. You run into beasts every time you go out, so if you have something with you, there’s gonna be less of a chance of this happening.” He gestured at the cut on Gavin’s arm.

“If I find beasts, I can just fly away,” Gavin said as the other Alati lead him somewhere they could practice. He held the dagger by the end of its hilt, afraid to get near its razor sharp edge. “I probably won’t need to use it that much.”

Dan taught him how to use it anyway.

Gavin didn’t know it at the time, but three years later he would get hit in the head with a rock and use that same dagger to fight a dragon.

–

But a month before that, a stranger came to the village. A human would come inside their walls.

Gavin had never seen a human before, but if he did, he knew he was supposed to make himself hidden until they were gone because humans weren’t supposed to know about the Alati. This one apparently did, though. Somehow.

Gavin never saw his face. He saw the man enter, led by a Guardian to the chief’s court. He was hooded and quiet, and he sent uncomfortable shivers up Gavin’s spine. He saw the man leave, too, but even though he was still hooded, he was not quiet.

“You fools, you’re all fools!” He shouted as he struggled against the Guardians dragging him through the village square. “I will not forget this! I’ll be back, I’ll have my revenge!”

Gavin remembers the curses that spilled relentlessly out of his mouth through all of that. He didn’t like recalling the memory. He thought his first sight of a human would be a lot different than that.

And it was, because at that time, nobody knew what was hidden under the cloak.

–

A month after the stranger arrived, Gavin still wandered in the forest, and he was more thankful than ever that Dan had taught him how to use a dagger before. The beasts were more violent than he’d ever seen, and he’d been going out less. However, he was glad he chose to go out this time.

He was resting on a tree branch after beating a hasty retreat from a trio of wolf beasts, and through the singing birds and leaves, he head an unfamiliar voice say, “Son of a bitch, goddamn roots on the path!”

He was also glad that he bothered to pay attention when he was taught the second language, or else he wouldn’t have known what the person said at all. Gavin perked up and immediately began looking for the owner of the voice – definitely a stranger to the woods if he was using the second language. Maybe a human. He hoped his first real sight of a human went better than the fiasco last month.

It only took a quick moment to find the person. It was a man by the looks of it, with a sword strapped to his side, a small supply pack, and a box attached to his back. Gavin would have been lying if he said that it wasn’t an odd sight. But there were  _no wings_  on them, and Gavin became more interested – it  _was_  a human. They were looking down at something in their hands, and Gavin tried to get closer. He moved carefully, trying to keep himself hidden, but as he settled on a closer branch, his foot snapped one of its smaller offshoots. Gavin froze, a mantra of “Crap, he’s going to see me” running through his head.

The man didn’t see him. Instead, he put his map away and continued on the path unaware. Gavin breathed a sigh of relief and his body relaxed.

And then he made the decision to follow the man, because that encounter (or whatever) went a whole lot better than the last one. There were no cold shivers traveling up his spine.

But, as he learned a few moments later, the human  _was_  aware. Maybe not of Gavin, but he knew at least that something was near him. As Gavin went from tree to tree, his wings creating a camouflage over him, the man on the path didn’t say anything else, but when Gavin’s foot once again snapped something on a branch, the human immediately froze, and Gavin held his breath as the branch he was on groaned under his weight.

Please don’t fall, he thought, please don’t fall.

A second later, Gavin’s stomach went cold, because the sound he heard was no longer the branch groaning, but the unmistakable growling of beasts. No! This wasn’t the time! Gavin looked around carefully, trying to locate the beasts, hoping it wasn’t the same ones from before. Then something occurred to him – that human didn’t know about the beasts here, how mean they’d gotten. His head snapped back around to check on the human, but what he saw instead was a rock three inches from his face and pain bloomed across his head before he could even think about getting out of the way. He yelped loudly, clutching his head and completely losing his balance and falling out of the tree.

Oh no, he thought, rolling over as the barking reached his ears. Oh no, get up, get up quick!

He didn’t get up quick enough, because a second later, the man who’d thrown the rock at him burst into the clearing, and all Gavin could do was stare –  _he was so dead._

But he wasn’t, because even though the beasts were crashing through the bushes, the human was pulling out his sword and shouting, “Fuck – get out of the way!”

And Gavin got out of the way, and the human drove his sword into one of the beast’s shoulders where he was kneeling only a second before. The man swung again and the beast went down, and as Gavin stood up, still surprised, the man said to him, “You owe me.”

The other beasts were lunging before Gavin could reply, and it only took half a second for him to draw his dagger – that human was right, Gavin owed him and it was only right he help take down these beasts. Dan taught him how to use the dagger for a reason, and Gavin had the feeling that Dan would have been proud of how smoothly the dagger flew threw the air and struck down one of the beasts before it could harm the human.

“Now we’re even,” Gavin said in the second language. The human stared at him for a second, and then they both went into action as the last beast attacked. It was the biggest and meanest, and the human’s sword – iron or steel, Gavin couldn’t tell – wasn’t enough to deal any real damage through its think hide. But Gavin had green-metal, the sharpest material know to man, and he managed to leave a great slash on the beast. He cheered internally – and then blanched, because the beasts didn’t die like he’d hoped, and it was slamming all its weight into him and knocking all the air out of his lungs.

His dagger left his hand as he landed on the ground, stunned, and he struggled to stand again. Fear made his insides freeze up, but the beast wasn’t cutting him to ribbons – the other man was distracting it. Gavin rolled over and saw his dagger a few yards away, and he forced himself to stand and make his way to it, stumbling as he went. He had to get it back, Dan gave that to him, and he had to use it to help this human, because this human had  _saved his life_.  _Twice_  now.

His vision kept swaying, and by the time he finally retrieved his dagger and turned to the human, the beast was dead and the man was kneeling on the ground, clutching his arm while blood streamed from the gash on his shoulder. Fuck, that’s a lot of blood, Gavin thought, but he didn’t see any other injuries…

“Shit,” he said as he approached. “Are you all right?”

“Do I look okay?” The stranger snapped. Gavin blamed it on the obvious wound.

“Easy, don’t bite my head off,” Gavin said, kneeling next to the human. The wound looked bad, but he’d seen worse on the Guardians. But holy crap, that was a lot of blood. Gavin felt his breath get quicker and he wondered if the person actually was dying. “Just wondering if you’re on the verge of death or anything.”

“My bag,” the human said, “in my bag, there’re bandages and shit, get them. On the side.”

Gavin reached over, a little nervous, and drew out the man’s medical supplies. He frowned – this was hardly enough to cover an entire journey with such a wound. “Are you sure this will be enough?”

“It’s enough,” the man replied shortly as he began treating his wound, wincing as he cleaned it. Gavin watched him as he worked – he’d obviously had to treat his own wounds before – and he helped the man bind the bandages over the gash. He glanced at the remaining bandages – no, it wasn’t enough.

“There’re more beasts like that in these woods,” Gavin told him, trying to warm him. “You don’t look like you can fight too well if you run into any more.”

“Are you offering to do something about that?” The human asked after a small chuckle.

Was he? Gavin considered it. There wasn’t much he could do, except… He didn’t know how people would react; they’d been a little paranoid since their last encounter with a human, especially with the violence increasing in the beasts. But this man had saved his life, and Gavin knew for certain that would count for something. He glanced around them, and then checked above, just in case any Guardians were flying overhead. There were none.

“There’s a village,” he said quietly. “It’s deeper in the forest, but they’re used to dealing with those beasts and injuries like that.”

“How far?”

“Pretty far on foot, but we can make it by nightfall. They can give you the medical supplies you need to treat your wound properly.”

“I didn’t know there was a village here. It’s not –”

“It’s not on most maps, I know,” Gavin said. Humans weren’t supposed to know about them. “It’s… a precaution. I don’t want to just leave you here, I owe you for that fight.”

The man was silent for a moment, and then he nodded and stood. “All right,” he said, retrieving his sword. “Okay, let’s go…”

“My name’s Gavin.”

“Michael,” the human replied. “Lead the way then, Gavin.”

Gavin nodded, and lead Michael onto the right path. He was still a bit anxious – even though there was no reason for the villagers to turn Michael away – but he allowed Michael to lean on him as they walked regardless. He owed him that much and more.

–

Three years ago, if somebody had told him that the simple act of being hit in the head with a rock would lead him to where he is now, he would have whacked them upside their head. But nobody had told him that three years ago, and he is still amazed that a rock to the head led him to meeting Michael the way he did, lead him to the debt that he ultimately forgot about – lead him to fighting a dragon.


End file.
